Category Archives: Henry David Thoreau

Missing Tree

Posted on July 28, 2016 by Corinne H. Smith | Comments Off

“This afternoon, being on Fair Haven Hill, I heard the sound of a saw, and soon after from the Cliff saw two men sawing down a noble pine beneath, about forty rods off. I resolved to watch it till it fell. … Before I had reached it the axeman had already half divested it of its branches. … And the space it occupied in upper air is vacant for the next two centuries. It is lumber. He has laid waste the air. … Why does not the village bell sound a knell? I hear no knell tolled. I see no procession of mourners in the streets, or the woodland aisles.” ~ Thoreau’s journal, December 30, 1851

Some fine, older trees stand among our 1950s suburban ranch houses. Four of the tallest and the oldest are in my own back yard. I’m lucky in this respect, except when it comes to having to rake leaves in the fall. But other nice trees also line my neighbors’ lawns along the street.

One of these neighbors – across the street and down one property – had a big sugar maple in the front yard. It had huge broad leaves and thick branches that hung over the street a bit. Sometimes you had to steer your car away from it so that the lowest limbs wouldn’t graze your roof. But it was hardly any hazard, if you only paid attention. At one point, I had thought of offering to trim off a few of the most sagging branches for these folks.

Alas, I never did.

Sugar maple graces the street.

On a recent Monday morning, two heavy duty trucks and a chipper arrived on our street. I groaned when I saw where they parked: right beside that full sugar maple with the big green leaves. I hoped against all hope that the neighbors were just getting the tree trimmed to the street. But no. The longer the chain saw whined and the more frequently came the cluttered stints of the chipper, I knew this visit could only mean a true death sentence. It was. In just under 90 minutes, the entire maple was gone. Only a smooth stump remained, in the midst of a very bleak space. What a loss!

Within minutes, the magnificent tree was cut down.

If I had only known, I would have gone over and hugged this tree before the workers arrived. I would have searched its branches for birds and squirrels and warned them of the impending danger. I would have made sure no nests were still in use. I saw old nests in this tree every winter: as knotted fists captured in the spidery silhouette of bare branches. I hoped there weren’t any animal homes up there now. Most critters were out and on their own by this time of season, but you never knew. I could have chained myself to the trunk and defended them in person, if I had seen little ones to protect.

I don’t know the couple who lives in this house. I don’t know their reasons for initiating this awful act. The tree had shaded their whole front yard and had beautiful yellow leaves in the fall. Its intake of carbon dioxide and transpiration of oxygen was no doubt enough to supply all of the breathing air those two people needed to survive. It probably blocked out so much afternoon sun that they didn’t have to run their air conditioner as much as they would have, otherwise. And now their electric bills will begin to escalate, for sure. I can’t imagine that any real problems the maple caused couldn’t have been solved in another way. Unfortunately, it is now obvious by the posted little yellow flags that the gas line to the house led right underneath it.

Reduced to wood chips.

If I had only known, I would have taken pictures of the tree before those weapons of mass destruction arrived. As it is, a search of my stash of stills revealed only one really good photo of the tree, taken several winters ago. This is how I’ll remember this beautiful sugar maple. This was one of its good old days.

Now, after the fact, what can I do? Sometimes I feel as though I want to talk to the owners. I want to know the reasons; and yet at the same time, I don’t feel up to dwelling on the loss. I love big trees. I used to climb them, when I was young. I need them in my personal landscape. I’m still unsettled every time I pass this property or even look in its direction. There’s a void here. Thoreau described the scene aptly. They have “laid waste the air.” And just as on that Concord day 165 years ago, no village bells have tolled in remembrance of this life well lived. And they should have. They should have celebrated its existence loudly, before it was taken down. The tree should have heard something else in its last moments, instead of the whine and clutter of the machinery of its assassins. Am I the only one missing you, Tree? I hope not. I hope you had more friends than just me.

Decorated with snow.

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Posted in Environment, General, Henry David Thoreau, Nature

Furnishing Walden – a poem for Henry’s birthday

Posted on July 12, 2016 by Sandy Stott | Comments Off

Furnishing Walden 

a chair
                  a bed
a desk

The desk came first in 1838 as
it became apparent that the hours
afoot would be brought here

where they could be inked into lines
that would circumscribe worlds -
local paths, thickets, swamps,

birds, insects, plants, the odd
groundhog - all these ligaments
and lineaments, a sort of puritan

golem who would stir drafts later
and one by one readers
would walk out and be saved

for a day and the next day
each would saunter out
again along those lines

and every so often one
would not return. He saw
so far forward, you wonder

if he lived in his world,
but then you see him sprawled
on the young ice inching out,

reading the worm-trail of
history in the mud the whole
lens of coming winter flexing

beneath him and you know
from the seep of cold
that he was there, and you know

now know how you should live.
You push back the chair and
rock for a moment on the rockers

he attached to allow for just
this and you turn like a leaf
in fall contemplative;

it is, this walking motion,
the birth of thought
its pod opening like last year’s

milkweed, its heart-shaped seeds
suspended beneath the wisp
of white sail as they float

forth. All night long
on the modified Chinese sedan
that is your bed, its

rattan hand holding you up,
you dream and the small
night animals in this patch

of borrowed woodland
say that you sleep
and awaken everywhere

at home.

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Posted in Arts, General, Henry David Thoreau, Literature, Living Deliberately, Nature, News and Events, The Roost, Walden

Afloat at the Theater

Posted on July 8, 2016 by Sandy Stott | Comments Off

…even as the eagle drives her young at last from the neighborhood of her eyrie, — for their own good, since there is not food enough there for all…Thoreau, Journal, 3/22/61

As we draw near these duck-broods, a conversational cluck-talk suddenly morphs into squawking concern – every duck’s talking at once, and they have begun to hurry this way and that. Are we cause? In our three small boats do we appear to be duck-doom? Ah, no…something else is near.

Also amply fed in this season of plenty, an eagle wheels above the now-panicked covey of ducks, who – it must be said – have had a prolific breeding season. There may be 10 adult ducks in this flotilla 50 or so, and seconds ago one of them has set up the alarm, but now much of the cacophony rises from fuzzy brown ducklings, who seem suddenly to have adopted the random movements of a moth when a bat flies near. The orderly little files of ducks that had been paddling serenely out of our boats’ path have become a hurried scatter of flurried (flightless) wings and webbed feet scratching for water-traction.

The eagle, some twenty feet off the deck, nears, and wherever it veers, 20 ducks dive. Little explosions of spray show where they’ve gone under; their disappearances are audible, like so many small stones raining down. Now, the eagle flares wings, then drops, talons extended, splashing down like an off-kilter parachute, perhaps right atop one of the swimming brown streaks. But it is a mostly graceless attempt, followed by a labored rowing of wings on the water to get – finally, with empty claws – airborne again. All this work, the eagle’s affect seems to say. But once soaring again, the bird’s menace returns, eliciting more squawked protest and more darting in all directions.

After a minute of circling, the eagle appears to tire and wings off to perch in a white pine hundreds of yards away; once there, he vanishes from our sight, and we look back to the ducks, who have begun to gather again into their usual softly chuckling conversations. Then – ALARUM! a gabble of cluck-squawks! Who spotted the eagle is unclear, but well before he arrives to search again in circles for a slow duck, fowl consternation rises and the webbed feet flurry. There must be a lookout duck in the group; does every covey have its lookout? More little geysers of spray as they dive – it is as if they have all drilled for this moment, though they also pop back up quickly enough to suggest that a forward-looking eagle should be able to nab one as he or she emerges. But no, there’s no more awkward eagle-diving, only circling, which goes on for another long minute before its time for another pine rest.

And then, a minute or so later, the eagle leaves, flying upcoast for, who knows? – dumber ducks, slow fish, perhaps an attempt to shakedown a more efficient osprey, who, unlike our eagle, dives often and comes up with food sometimes.

But for three minutes we have been admitted to an avian theater with three, floating front-row seats.

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Posted in Arts, Environment, General, Henry David Thoreau, Living Deliberately, Nature, News and Events, The Roost, Thoreau Quote